Spot the amateur!

Never fly in shorts and flip-flops - and always put a shoe in the hotel safe: ten expert travelling tips from airline crew

No one travels as often as flight attendants and pilots. Here are ten travel tricks they learn in training. Before you fly, use a marker pen and write your name, home city and email address on a sheet of A4 paper. Get it laminated in a print shop and put it inside your suitcase to identify it if your baggage tags fall off. Photocopy your passport and keep a copy in your hand baggage. Give a copy to your travel companion and leave one with someone you trust at home. It sounds like overkill, but cabin crew have photos of their passports on their phones as well. They even email the pictures to themselves as a final fall-back. Travel insurance isn’t much use if no one knows who your policy is with. Tell your travel companions (and someone at home) who they should call for help if the worst happens. Don’t pre-order a vegetarian meal. Crew say veggies hardly ever get upgraded, because there might not be a suitable meal for them up front. You’re most likely to be moved to the fat seats if you’re in the airline’s frequent-flier scheme and don’t have any special dietary requirements. Put your phone charger and plug adapter in your hand baggage. Crews know how often planes are delayed or diverted and don’t risk dead batteries in strange countries. It’s also second nature for crews to turn off data roaming before leaving the EU. Have a change of underwear in your hand baggage. It won’t take up much space but it will tide you over till the shops open if your main bag is delayed or disappears. Always keep medication in original packaging, ideally with a copy of your prescription, in case you’re questioned at customs. If you’re found carrying a stash of hard-to-identify pills, your immigration experience is unlikely to go well. Never fly in shorts – because you never know where your plane might land. A recent Swiss Air flight from Zurich was aiming for Los Angeles where it was 21C and sunny. But after a technical issue it spent nearly 12 hours in Greenland – where it was -21C and snowing. Don’t fly in flip-flops either. In an emergency, cabin crew are trained to get every passenger off a plane and far from the fuselage in less than 90 seconds. Emergencies are incredibly rare, but if they happen you want to be in sensible shoes. If you use the safe in your hotel room put a single shoe (sensible or otherwise) inside it, along with your valuables. Looking for that missing shoe should remind you to empty the safe when you pack to leave. For more cabin crew secrets, read Welcome Aboard! by flight attendant Neil Jackson, available on Amazon.